Drop Dead

The Turk felt good.

He stretched, catlike, on the mattress and took a big pull at the cigarette and watched the smoke eddy up to the one bright light on the ceiling.

Inside his hard, flat stomach was the greatest meal The Turk had ever known.

Everything he liked, starting with a big blast of rye and 7-Up, highlighted by a fat steak up to there with onions and mushrooms, topped off by a whole apple pie and three plates of butter pecan ice cream.

If they could see me now, The Turk thought. Those punks. He was a Big Man now.

Chick! went the electric clock out in the hallway.

Another minute gone. The Turk sighed long and deep. There was a lot to think about.

Joe McGee, for instance ...

He never told Joe McGee the guys called him The Turk because that was none of Joe McGee's business or anybody's business at the newspaper where Joe McGee was a rewrite man and The Turk had been a copy boy. To everybody on the nightside staff of the paper The Turk was just plain lazy, impudent, back-talking Bob Hannesen.

The Turk remembered the night those three kids got the chair for killing that old guy in the delicatessen and the real great story Joe McGee wrote about it. He was nowhere near Sing Sing that night but wow, that story made you feel you were there.

"You know, Mr. McGee," The Turk said, "I think they're better off, you know?"

"Let's say everybody's better off," Joe McGee said.

"No, I mean like, what if they got life? I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life in no jail. Not me. They can give me the chair any time."

"That's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard out of you and you're pretty stupid," said Joe McGee. The Turk smiled. That was what he liked about Joe McGee. He never weaseled around anything, he told you.

"Why?" said The Turk. "Now you tell me, why am I stupid?"

"I'll tell you," said Joe McGee. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"What do you know about living?"

"Whaddaya want me to do, write a book or something?"

"Write a book? I'd like to see you write a whole sentence."

"Well, I still say it's better to get the chair than life."

"You know something? You'd make a good soldier."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"I mean you're so goddamn stupid and that's what makes a good soldier, stupidity. Look: You take an older man, you ask him, go out there and kill those guys who are shooting at you, and he'll try to get out of it. But a young jerk like you, you'll fight with your teeth if you got nothing else."

"Yeah," said The Turk with discovery in his tone. "I guess I would at that. How'd you know?"

"Now I'll tell you a war story," said Joe McGee. "I was in the Army and they sent me overseas and I was in three battles and I was all of 20 years old and I only get the willies about it now. You could get killed doing that! But I never thought about it while it was happening because I was a dumb, jerky kid, just like you."

"Well, now, wait a minute, wait a minute," said The Turk. "You got a wife and kids now, right? Maybe you're thinking about them, am I right?"

"No, that's not all there is to it," said Joe McGee. "It's just that you live a little more, you get to like it, you know something about it. You don't have to ball all the time, you get to just enjoy living. Ah, what's the use? You won't know what I'm talking about until you get to be my age. If you live that long."

"Who wants to be your age?" said The Turk. "I want a good-looking corpse, you know?"

"Get the hell out of here," said Joe McGee.

"I like you, Mr. McGee," said The Turk. "Lemme do something for you. Cup of coffee? Sharpen your pencils?"

But The Turk meant it. Of all the people at the paper Joe McGee was the only one The Turk respected and with The Turk, respect came first. Joe McGee, he knew.

The Juvenile Aid Bureau got The Turk his job at the paper. The editor was a member of the Big Brother movement. He liked to help young kids in trouble. The J.A.B. thought The Turk had a brain or two in his head so they asked the editor to give The Turk a chance as a night copy boy. Maybe something would come of it, something like what Angelo Patri did for John Garfield. And it would be bad if The Turk had his nights free.

One of the first jobs they gave The Turk was making the coffee-run to the Greek's, the dirty little diner behind the police station where the cab drivers and bakery deliverymen hung out at night.

The Turk was waiting for the Greek to fill the containers when Joe McGee came in, two hours late to work. It was snowing and Joe McGee was bundled up in a shaggy tweed overcoat with a shaggier fur collar. He was a big, beefy guy in his thirties, with red hair and a bushy red mustache. The Greek poured him a glass of buttermilk and Joe McGee threw it down in one gulp. The Turk thought his eyes looked sad, like a dog's he once had.

Joe McGee stared around the place and his eyes fell on The Turk and stayed there. The Turk felt like it was a priest or a cop looking at him, looking into him.

"Hi," The Turk said challengingly, but Joe McGee just kept looking.

"That's your new copy boy," said the Greek. "He's gonna be the boss tomorrow, the way he talks around here."

"I'm pleased to meet you," The Turk said. "My name's Bob Hannesen."

"Well, you can live that down," said Joe McGee, and turned away like a book closing. "Gimme a coffee regular."

Later, in the city room, The Turk watched Joe McGee working.

He had just taken a story over the phone from the night police reporter and he was sitting there with his arms folded, chewing the ends of his mustache, and staring at The Turk.

"Hey kid," he said. "Come here. Do me a favor. Take a walk down the end of the room and come back real slow, like you were going to meet your girl and you didn't want to get there too soon."

"Wha-at?" said The Turk.

"No, I mean it," said Joe McGee. "I got a story here where a kid is walking down the street like that with the cops waiting for him where he's going and I want to describe it. Do what I said." The Turk shrugged and obeyed, even swaggered a little.

"That's it, that's it!" said Joe McGee.

He bent over his typewriter and began stabbing the keys as if in anger, and stared at the paper as if it were the face of a man he was fighting.

The Turk slumped into a chair at the copy boys' desk. "What's that guy, nuts or something?" he asked.

"You gotta be a little nuts to be in this business," said the head night copy boy.

"No, I think he's really a little nuts. Making me parade up and down like that. What the hell was that for?"

"He told you. He wanted to write about it. Wait till you see the story. He's a hell of a writer."

Later, the night editor gave the story to The Turk to take out to the composing room. Once out of sight of the city desk, The Turk stopped to read it.

It made him feel naked.

It was about some punk getting arrested for raping a girl and how the cops tailed him as he strolled along to meet her. But when Joe McGee described the kid walking, it was The Turk. Everything -- his black leather jacket, his blond, Detroit-cut hair, his skintight chino pants, his pointed shoes, his handsome, sullen face with the mean, thin lips, and that insolent, heel-dragging walk.

"Mr. McGee," he said when the rewrite man wasn't busy, "that kid in that story, does he look like me?"

"Search me," said Joe McGee. "I guess he looks something like you. He's got a name like yours and he was about the same build."

"How about the rest of it?"

"You mean what he did?"

"Yeah, with the girl. Would I do something like that?"

"Why not?" said Joe McGee. "Put yourself in his place. You got this girl, she says yes, there you are. Nothing any red-blooded, clean-cut American boy wouldn't do."

"Well, I know, but rape ..."

"You read the story?"

"Yeah, I read it."

"You didn't read it too well."

"Sure I did. You said rape."

"I said statutory rape."

"Yeah, I saw that."

"Do you know what it means?"

"Sure. Rape. You rape somebody, you're violatin' the statutes. Right?"

"Not exactly. It means she was under 18, the age of consent, and Mama found out about it and went to the cops. Like I said, put yourself in the kid's place. She tells you, help yourself, daddy-o. What are you going to do, spit in her eye?"

"I'll have to remember that," The Turk said, grinning. "Next time I'll tell the girl, lissen, you know what my friend Joe McGee told me? I can't go raping no statues, honey!"

"Don't be a wise guy," said Joe McGee.

"I like you, Mr. McGee," said The Turk. "You're my friend."

"Drop dead," said Joe McGee. But they got along and The Turk learned to appreciate Joe McGee's insatiable curiosity about people's motives, guts, meanness and goodness, and where the line was between those last two qualities.

"Mr. McGee," The Turk said once, "you don't belong in this crappy business. You can write stuff so it sounds like it was real important. I mean it's like you see it happening when you read it. Why don't you write a book?"

"You mean just start writing and when I've got a couple of hundred pages I've got a book, huh?"

"You know you could do it. You could make a lot of money. Why don't you?"

"Anybody can do this," said Joe McGee waving at the city room. "Not everybody can write a book. I can't write a book. I don't even want to write a book. Nobody reads books any more."

"I'll read your book, Mr. McGee. I'm your friend."

"You gotta have something you want to tell somebody when you write a book."

"So? So?"

"So I don't want to tell anybody anything. I got a message. I'll go to Western Union. I just want everybody to mind their own business, including you. Drop dead, now, I got work to do here."

One morning after work The Turk and Joe McGee and one of the photo-engravers stopped in the bar across from the Greek's.

Joe McGee and the engraver got pretty drunk and The Turk decided to go easy so he could listen to them talk.

It soon became a one-way conversation, a lecture by Joe McGee on the decline and fall of practically everybody.

To everything Joe McGee said, the engraver would answer "right," or "that's right," or "you're goddamn right."

Finally the engraver was sound asleep, his face buried in his arms on the bar, but Joe McGee lectured on.

"You, you're a journeyman in your trade. You can get a job anywhere, you can make enough money to live like a man. You could get a job shop, make cuts for house organs, work in the daytime and hire other dumbbells to work (continued on page 52)Drop Dead(continued from page 14) the night shift. So what's the matter with you? Why are you still here, why do I see your ugly face every night, why, why? Well, I don't know why. Me, I'm a damn good newspaperman. I know it. I can work for anybody and I've worked for most of them. I've done other stuff. Advertising, PR -- I didn't like it. I tried to write a book. I didn't have any book in me. You think what I do around here is writing? It's crap. It's for Mrs. Schultz to go tsk-tsk and then she wraps the fish in it. That's all I'm good for. Mrs. Schultz. There's always a dance in the old dame yet. Everybody wants recognition. You know what I mean? We never any of us really grow up, we always got to have somebody else telling us listen, you're a Big Man, you did a great job, you're really somebody now. And that's what it is with these punk kids getting in trouble. You think they do it for kicks like they say, when they get caught beating up on some old ape in the alley? No, no, they do it for recognition. Nobody gives them a second look until they get in some big trouble and then they get their name in the papers and the other punks step aside, this is a Big Man now, a Big Man. Ah, your mother's big nose. Recognition. Innkeeper! Innkeeper! Fill us with the old familiar juice, for the love of God."

The job didn't last. The Turk lost his interest in it as he eventually lost interest in everything. He started calling in sick again and again and finally he didn't bother to call at all, and they took it eight times, and then the night editor took him aside and told him he was fired.

The man took it seriously and tried to be nice but The Turk laughed in his face.

Joe McGee stopped him on his way out.

"Where do you go from here, kid? You got a job, something to keep you busy?" He sounded a little more gruff than usual.

"No, I don't have no job. I don't want no job for a while. I'm just gonna ball and bop around awhile. You know?"

"Yeah, I know. 'With the statutes."

"Maybe."

"That's just swell. Listen, what's the matter with you? What did you get yourself fired for? Kicks?"

"Yeah, for kicks."

"Maybe you'll do something real big now, huh? Rob a bank? Push some old lady down the stairs like Richard Widmark? Kill somebody?"

"Sure," said The Turk.

"Well, I'll see you," said Joe McGee. "And you know where I'll see you. I can write the story now and fill in the names when it happens. Go ahead. Be a Big Man. Go all the way. Go to Sing Sing. Go to the chair. Go to hell. Have a good-looking corpse, you stupid little jerk."

"I said I like you and I still do, Mr. McGee," said The Turk. "I mean it, it's been real nice knowing you. You're a good guy."

"Drop dead," Joe McGee said. The Turk turned to go and Joe McGee touched his arm.

"Wait a minute," he said. He fished a handful of bills and change out of his pocket. "Here, take this, maybe it'll pay the rent or something. Look. Take care of yourself, you dumb, dumb little -- ah, get out, get out, get out ..."

Well, they weren't all like Joe McGee.

Some of them were like Teddy ...

It would be supper time in their cheesy little apartment over the laundry.

Teddy would be home from the Navy Yard and planted in the only comfortable chair reading the horse pages and drinking beer.

The cooking smell would get into your ears and soon his mother would set the table with the glass plates and the food still in the pots and pans and they would all sit down and The Turk would dread every moment of it.

He would just sit and eat and try to mind his own business and hope Teddy wouldn't start something but one thing or another always brought it on.

Teddy had an annoying habit of pretending to be deaf and he would get into conversations in the middle.

"What did you do in school today, dear?" his mother would say.

"Nothin'."

"Nothing at all?"

"Well, nothin' special. Today's Wednesday. History, Phys Ed, Civics--"

"What's fizz ed?" Teddy would rumble.

"Physical education," The Turk would say.

"Miserable education? What the hell is that?"

"He said physical education, dear," his mother would say.

"Never mind what you think he said. Let him tell me. What am I sending him to school for, to learn to mumble? Let him talk decent."

"You're sending me to school? Some cruddy public school I've got to go, you're sending me there?"

And so it would start, and finally The Turk would just leave without finishing his meal.

Or in bed, late at night, The Turk would listen to Teddy, drunk, giving his mother a bad time in the kitchen.

"What the hell were you before I came along? Tell me that. What were the pair of you, you and the kid? Hah?"

"Teddy, please go to bed. You're tired, dear. You have to get up in the morning."

"I don't have to do nothing in this life but die, everything else I got a choice. I'll tell you what you were. You were a pair of bums and for my money that punk won't never be nothing but a bum."

"Teddy, Teddy, Robert is an only child, he's all I've got besides you."

"You hear the way he talks to me? Is that any way for a young kid to talk to his old man, even if I am his stepfather? Where'd he get that snotty habit, anyway? I'll tell you where. From that no-good crud you were married to, his father, that no-good crud."

"Teddy! The Dead!"

"This is what I think of the dead! Dead he's better off. He wasn't nothing but a lousy weakling and his son is nothing but a bum and soon as the punk gets his working papers he goes out, understand me, unless he learns how to act nice ..."

A lot to think about, a lot to go over, a lot of good and bad stuff to mull over and decide -- decide what? Well, just decide.

Chick! Another minute.

The guys ...

• • •

"Will ya get a load of this jerk?" said Roger Connolly, leader of The Invaders, as the new member stood before him and his boys. "What's your name, stupid?"

"It's Bob--"

Crack!

A sunburst of pain blinded The Turk as the fist hit him.

"Don't you know how to talk to people, stupid?"

The Turk blinked hard and the little room in the cellar took shape and here was Roger Connolly standing in front of him.

"What did you do that for?" The Turk said.

Connolly's eyes gaped and his mouth fell open in a burlesque of incredulity.

"Will ya listen to him?" the gang leader said. "What did I do that for? What do I think I am, running this outfit or something? Look at him stand-in' there like he was a Turk!"

"A Turk! A Turk! A jerky Turk! A turkey Jerk!" chanted The Invaders, circling the two boys like wolves.

"Listen, stupid ..." said Connolly.

"You listen, stupid."

"What did you call me?"

"I said stupid. You're a stupid bastard, you stink, you're a fruit."

The leader flung his jacket off.

"I guess you want a real initiation," he said. "I'll give you one. I'll make you a member. A dead member. We'll put your name on the honor roll. I'm gonna like doing--"

Suddenly The Turk crunched his heel down on the other boy's instep. As the gang leader's head went down in reflex. The Turk slammed his knee into Connolly's (continued overleaf)Drop Dead(continued from page 52) face, then rabbit-whacked him on the neck.

Thup! Thup! Thup! The Turk kicked the boy as he lay squirming on the floor, until he stopped squirming.

"Anybody else?" The Turk said. They were all gaping at their fallen leader. One had the sense to answer.

"No, man," he said. "You're the Man now. You're Big Boss, if you want to be."

"All right," The Turk said. "All right. Throw him out of here. Jump!" Three of them hustled the battered boy out and flung him into an alley.

They called him The Turk from that day on, and as leader, one of his first official actions was to change the name of the gang to The Turks. For two wonderful years he led them, picked and chose their victims and his women, made his guys jump for him like a bunch of trained monkeys.

He felt like he really belonged to something, for the first time. He was able to keep it from Teddy until his stepfather found out that he and seven Turks had been closely questioned about a pocketbook snatch in which an old woman was pretty badly beaten up. There was a showdown at supper that night.

"You're nothing but a lousy little gangster. You're one of those teenage hoodlums in the papers. Well, is it true?"

"You know all the answers."

"This is how you get your money."

"No, this isn't how I get my money. You know I got a job nights down at the paper."

"You weren't there last night. They called up. Where were you?"

"None of your goddamn business."

Teddy came at him but The Turk was ready, and one good jab in that beer belly deflated the older man like the bag of wind he was. That was the night The Turk finally left home for good ...

Chick!

Then, man, there was Lorna.

The Turk shut his eyes against the ceiling light and lolled in an ecstacy of memory, of those nights with her in the Polack's cellar, of the way she would exult in every violent thing he did, of her looking across a crowd at him with the wide hunger in her eyes, until they had to sneak away somewhere for half an hour ...

The night he met her the gang had crashed a Police Athletic League dance. They were incognito; they had left the "Turk" jackets home. The Turk strolled along the wall of the drafty old gym, looking them over, until he saw her.

That jerk she was dancing with, he didn't rate a girl like that, with her night-black hair, her tall, proud body, the dark, insulting eyes, the full, hungry-looking lips. The Turk went out and tapped the guy on the shoulder.

"I'd like to dance with your girl."

"Get lost."

"I said it in a nice way, buddyroo, I'd like a dance with your girl."

"1 told you to get lost." Magically. The Turk's men had cut them off from the rest of the dancers but in a way that did not attract attention.

By the way she was looking at him -- there was fear there, but something else, too -- The Turk knew he was on sure ground. One of his guys stepped close to the jerk.

"This is The Turk," his man said. "He's gonna dance with the lady."

"He's real brave with eight guys to help him," said the jerk.

"You don't dig, man. We're not protecting him, we're protecting you."

"Wait a minute," said The Turk, staring at the girl. "Let the lady decide. You want to dance with me, miss?"

"Look, let's not have any trouble," the girl said. "Sure, I'll dance with you. Jimmy, I'll see you later, huh?"

"You bitch," Jimmy said.

"That's no way to talk to a lady," The Turk said.

"I wasn't talking to a lady," Jimmy said.

"Maybe you and me better take a little walk," The Turk said.

"Sure, you and your friends here."

"Just you and me, buddyroo."

"Turk," said the one who had spoken to Jimmy, "this is the P.A.L., you know? There's cops all over the place. Turk, listen, take it easy."

"I'm not afraid of him," Jimmy said. He left, with The Turk strolling after him. The other Turks eased the girl over to a chair and stood around her.

Presently The Turk came back in, massaging his right wrist, and silently led the girl out on the dance floor.

"So you're The Turk," she said.

"That's me, lady. I suppose you got a name?"

"A reputation, too."

"I'll take the name first."

"Lorna."

"Lorna," The Turk said. "I like that."

"What did you do to him?"

"What did I do to who?"

"You know who."

"You must be talkin' about somebody who isn't here," The Turk said. "Somebody who just blew away, you know?"

"All I've got to do is yell, Turk," the girl said. "All you'll see is cop."

"Go ahead."

"I might."

"Go on, yell," The Turk said.

"Maybe not right now." Lorna said, staring all over his face. "Maybe later. Much later."

The way she was dancing with him, the way they fitted together, like they were meant to do something about it.

"Let's take a ride." The Turk said.

"You got a car?"

"Sure," The Turk said.

"All right, man."

"You go sit over there and I'll bring it around front," The Turk said. "You'll be here, won't you?"

"I'm not going anywhere, man." she said.

He was back inside of five minutes. He led her out to a Pontiac convertible and she climbed in the front seat with him. When The Turk figured by the speedometer he had put 10 miles between them and the P.A.L. hall, he swung over to the curb and parked.

"All right, man," Lorna said. "Now where did you get this car?"

"I got it the same way I got you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I found it."

"Are you going to keep the car?"

"Nah, I'll ditch it over in --"

Then he realized what she was asking. Later with the radio humming softly and their cigarettes two coals in the dark, Lorna asked him, "Turk -- what did it feel like?"

"Wow," The Turk said.

"No, man, I mean what did it feel like to you?"

"What did it feel like? What do you think it felt like?"

"I want to hear you talk about it. Say it, man. I've got to hear you say it." The Turk thought.

"I'll tell you what it felt like," he said. "My old lady and me live up on top of a laundry and outside my window there's some telephone poles and the wires are real close. When the wind comes up hard I can lie in bed and listen to them wires -- thumm, thumm, thumm. Once there was a big storm and a coupla the wires busted and there was a big blue flame and a terrific big noise -- brraack, brraack -- like a loudspeaker turned up all the way. That big noise -- that's what it felt like."

"You want to know what it felt like to me?" said Lorna. "It was like you were six hundred guys, all at once. Hey, man, what's the matter?" The Turk was sitting up and peering into the dark. Far up the street was a blinking red light, blinking like a burst artery.

"You better hold on to something," The Turk said, "because we're gonna move, and we're liable to bust into little pieces all at once."

He vaulted into the front seat and gunned the motor and swung the big machine around and gave it the gas. He didn't know the neighborhood and he had to keep the lights on. Behind them the police car's siren began to screech. The Turk gripped the wheel hard and swung the powerful machine in and out of the streets with Lorna screaming "go, (continued on page 62)Drop Dead(continued from page 54) go, go!" When he had shaken the police they ditched the car and caught a bus home. The night was lifting and everywhere there was the stirring cacophony of the city awakening.

"What about your folks?" The Turk said when they were at Lorna's door. "We been out all night. You'll catch hell."

"I don't have no folks, man." Lorna said. "Just my big sister and she don't care what I do. She keeps telling me I'm a tramp. Well, I don't want to disappoint her, you know?"

"How about tonight?"

"You got a place?"

"Yeah, real cool, way out. The Polack's cellar. A bunch of blankets behind the furnace. You want it?"

"I want it, man," she said, touching him. "I'm gonna want it a lot ..."

Chick!

Then there was Christmas Eve, the biggest deal of all, the night that would only be topped by this one ...

The Turks and their debs were balling in the Polack's cellar. Man, it was way out. They had whiskey and beer and they were feeling great and everything went, man, everything.

At midnight, The Turk suddenly pushed Lorna away and put on his jacket.

"Where you going, man?"

"It's Christmas," The Turk said. "I got a family. Everybody got a family. I'm just gonna go see my family and wish them a happy Christmas."

"Turk, don't," said Lorna. She had heard that tone before and she knew what it meant. "You don't need any family. I'm your family. I'm your wife, man."

"Leave me alone," The Turk said.

"Turk, you're drunk, you don't know what you're doing. I'm not gonna let you go, man. I'm not --" But he flung her to the floor like a glove. They were all silent, watching him, worried. He took his stance in the middle of the floor.

"What's the matter with everybody?" The Turk yelled. "Stop lookin' at me like I was gonna kill somebody or something! I'll be back."

"We'll go with you, man," said one of his boys.

"I said I'll be back!" The Turk roared. No one stopped him.

They knew their leader.

• • •

When he got there the windows were dark in his mother's flat. There were no lights anywhere on the street, and no people, either. Good. The Turk had kept the key to the front door. He tried it, but the lock had been changed. Maybe Teddy had expected something like this.

The Turk rolled his jacket around his fist and bashed a hole in the glass door panel, right near the doorknob. He waited, but there was no sound from the dark above him. The Turk reached in and opened the door.

Ho crept up the stairs, carefully placing his feet on the far corners of the steps so they wouldn't creak. He could hear his mother and Teddy snoring.

He felt his way through the little foyer and into the kitchen, off which were the bedrooms. He bumped into the kitchen table and there was a clatter of glass. He switched on the light.

There were two empty beer bottles and a whiskey bottle three-quarters empty and near them, two glasses, one of which had slobbers of lipstick on the rim.

You bastard, The Turk thought. With me gone she couldn't fight you any longer so she joined you. My mother. A stewbum. Just like he said -- a bum. All right. He took a long drink out of the whiskey bottle and when he put it down Teddy was looking at him from the bedroom doorway. The man was naked and The Turk stared at his sagging belly.

"Merry Christmas, you bastard," The Turk said.

"What do you want here? You want to steal my money? You want to kill me for my money?"

"Your motherless money," said The Turk. "I'll tell you. I didn't know what I was here for until I saw that." He pointed to the bottles and the glass. "There, that one, with the lipstick on it."

"What about it?" said Teddy.

"I mean you made my mother a drunk." Teddy laughed shortly and spat on the floor.

"That sounds good, coming from you," Teddy said. "A punk criminal. Sure, she likes her liquor now. You know what she likes better?" And he pointed.

All The lurk remembered clearly after that was the little click the button made as he pressed it to flick the blade open. Everything else was just a kaleidoscope of movement and screaming and blood hitting him in the face, all over his clothes, soaking even his shoes.

"I just blacked out, I guess," he told the detectives later. "I didn't know just what I was gonna do when I went in there but when he did that, man, I lost my head, you know? Man, tell me, just what did I do?"

The detective across the desk from him sighed and picked up the medical examiner's report. "Fourteen penetrations of the man's body, 16 of the woman's body," he said. "That's what you did."

Joe McGee got him a lawyer, and the lawyer hired some doctors or something with big glasses and they asked him a lot of nosy questions about his habits, and they wrapped a blood-pressure thing around his arm and asked him more funny questions with a needle making ziggy tracks on a roll of paper.

And the lawyer made a big pitch to the jury how The Turk was a creation of a hostile environment, how his father died when The Turk was a baby, what a crumb Teddy was, all that jazz.

But that other lawyer, the District Attorney, he had a few things to say, too.

"This was not only murder but a wanton act of total rebellion against authority, against parentage, against the home itself," he told the jury. "For the sake of the vast majority of young people, the decent young people who will be the leaders of the future, the state cannot condone, by this court, any judgment but the supreme penalty.

"The defendant is 18 years of age. He is fully responsible for his actions and on conviction here he is liable for the full penalty.

"Perhaps the murder of the mother was an act of hysteria, but that of the stepfather has been shown to have been fully premeditated. And there is something else -- that broken door panel. In breaking and entering upon premises which were no longer his residence, the defendant committed a felony; while that felony was taking place the defendant caused the deaths of two persons.

"The law is very clear on this point. Murder in the commission of a felony is first-degree murder, with the same penalty provisions ..."

The lawyers had a good time, but The Turk was bored. He knew what was coming. What was all the balling around for, man?

Chick!

Well, it was all over now but the waiting and that would be over soon. He did miss the newspaper reporters around the courthouse, though. Man, what a fuss they made over him. And those stories Joe McGee wrote -- almost made you want to cry, you know?

The Turk heard a familiar voice in the hallway.

"What the hell are you reading that pass for? What did I do, forge the warden's name on it?"

"All right, fella, all right."

"It's not all right. It stinks. It's you crumby civil servants all over. You can't get fired so you blow your nose on everybody."

"How about you newspaper crumbs? You treat a man nice, do you, a man that's just tryin' to do his job?"

"Look -- do your job later. I got a deadline to meet, and you people set it. Look at that clock, man!"

"All right, all right! Martin, take this gen-tle-man down to see Hannesen." Footsteps bonged on the steel floor and then the cell door opened and Joe McGee walked in on The Turk. (concluded on page 66)Drop Dead(continued from page 62)

The Turk grinned and put out his hand.

Joe McGee slapped it aside. He was very, very drunk.

"I'm sorry, Mr. McGee," The Turk said. Joe McGee steered himself to the cot and sat down heavily.

"Can I print that?"

"What?"

"That you're sorry. Nobody's gonna believe it, you know. Only Mrs. Schultz. Then she'll wrap the fish in it."

"Mr. McGee," The Turk said, "I want to tell you how I appreciate everything." Joe McGee stared out of the window at the black sky, laced with the restless searchlights.

"That's all right, kid," he said.

Chick!

The Turk controlled himself. He asked, "What time is it, Mr. McGee?"

"Ten thirty."

"Half an hour."

"Yeah."

"Half an hour and they take me in there and sit me down and I blow the fuses, you know?"

Joe McGee looked up at him and The Turk began to feel scared for the first time because his visitor was crying. Not him! Not Joe McGee!

"Listen, Mr. McGee," The Turk said. "There isn't much time. I tell you what. I'll give you a story. A real great story. I'll -- listen, I'll break down and bawl for you, how's that? Can't I, Mr. McGee, can't I?"

Joe McGee shook his head slowly.

"No story, kid," he said. "No story, no interview, nothing."

"You mean you just came up here to see me?"

Joe McGee nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I -- thought somebody ought to be with you. I'm sorry I'm drunk, but I couldn't do it any other way."

"Oh, Jesus, Mr. McGee."

"Everybody ought to have somebody when they need them."

"Mr. McGee -- does it take long or is it over right away?"

"Right away," Joe McGee said.

"You know, Mr. McGee," The Turk said, "I still feel the same way about -- about what's going to happen."

"You're better off, is that it, kid?"

"Yeah. And you know, you were right about something else."

"What's that, kid?"

The Turk tried to say it but something hot and wet filled his mouth and eyes and he bit his lip and turned his head away.

The only way he could get it out, the thing he had to say to Joe McGee, was in the old snarl:

"Everybody's better off!"

Chick!